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Cynic project
Well, i am looking at the rules for cyberware,and my last street Sam. He had a MBW 4 system that would not get the atout stress,and was only .05% of it's essence cost. Yes, that is he had a level 4 move by wire system in him that cost .4 essence.

this happened because on the team there were three characters that were capable of being docs,and we had a beta lab. But what basicly happened was that the main doc who was mundane had a biotech at 9,(3-5) task pool dice, 9 complementary skill dice,and a magically ative nurse. He would then take beta grade cyberware and reduce the TN to 2.Given his odds, he would beable to add something like 15 options on all the implants he installed.This would mean he would make all his cyberware better than delta. i know you can house rule this,to fix the rules... Now the scare thin is that if you give this to a mage...Who wouldn't take one magic point loss for a MBW 4?
Sijal
Till you take a bullet in the spine and find out that it damaged a crittical componant.

BAM

There you are laying on the floor in a seizure and nothing but the corp baddies standing around laughing.
Herald of Verjigorm
I'd favor the synaptic boosted combo and a little munchware for a net total of 1 magic loss. Then immediately research a force 5 telekinetic variant of improved reflexes +4 and quicken it with a tattoo and 10 karma so that it acts as force 20 to those who would try to dispell it. This should lead to 9 initiative dice for an expected initiative of 6+9D6.

I'll have to reread the surgery rules, if they can be as abused as your example, I may never start a game with cyber or bio again. Just get the skill 10 doctor contact as a friend for life and buy it all in game.
Sargasso
True, but on the other hand, a doctor as skilled as that is as rare as hen's teeth. S/he likely commands a very high price, and is quite well sught after. If you want ridiculously excellent surgeory, you'll need to pay for, even if they are your freind. There's a whole bit about contacts doing work for you (gunsmithing) in the Canon Companion. It's a fair guide for any contacts doing b/r, smithing or sugoery work for you as well.
Cynic project
Well, about the laying on the ground twitching, not likely to happen.Wearing armor that tyou can wear walking down the street my old sam had 11/7.And had a bass body of 9And yes his bones were heavely laced.Yes he was human.

An the sugery was all done in team.The doctor was part of the team, he just happened to have a police record.So the surgery cost was covered by the fact that the Doc was a PC.If he was magically active he could basically do this sort of thing rate out of the box.
Herald of Verjigorm
The awakened superdoctor brings up a more important consideration:
Divination based on biotech: seeing the future in scars of the past

"Oh, and by the way, I was reading your future while implanting that stolen piece of ware, stay away from Renraku suits with red hair."
Austere Emancipator
I personally just assume that you cannot take the same Surgery Option twice for the same surgery/implant, which fixes that quite nicely. The rules don't actually flat-out say you can't take Essence Reduction (or similar options) more than once, but I think that was the intention anyway. Likewise, I'll just assume that Redundancy doesn't reduce the Stress taken below 1 -- again, the entry doesn't say so, but it just makes more sense that way to me.

However, if you do allow people to take the Essence Reduction option repeatedly, don't limit yourself to the 3 million nuyen.gif Redundant MBW-4 -- remember that you can get Dermal Sheath-3 and Titanium Bone Lacing for ~0.25 essence, for a cheap +6 Body and armor. Or why not get a full-cyber body with insane amounts of plating, weird in-built gear and massive STR/QUI for 2 essence? And remember, the megacorps are bound to have a bunch of surgeons in the Delta clinics with a lot more dice than that, so the GM can easily spring up a few 1337 ninjas on the PC group that have just about every piece of cyber and bioware in the books.

[Edit]OOPS!
QUOTE (M&M @ p. 146 under OPTIONS)
Unless it is noted, the same option can be used twice.
Strictly by the rules, then, you can use Essence Reduction twice. Not three or more times, just twice. That means you're stuck at a minimum Essence cost of 6.3 for standard-grade MBW-4. Too bad.[/Edit]
Edward
Your friend for life is the worlds best cyber implant sergen. He gives you 20% of. That makes the price for your surgery 8,000,000 instead of the normal 10,000,000.

You could play a PC with the ability to do this but the GM should demand a dammed good reason why you run the shadows. Any corp would be able and wiling to hide your ass for that kind of skill working on there S4 units. you can by a lot of adequate doctors in the sprawl for what they would pay you. The only reason left is you hat all corps witch you can do better from your shadow clinic.

Edward
Austere Emancipator
BTW, you can only take as many Positive Options as is the rating of the medical gear with which the procedure is done. A Beta-grade clinic of rating 15 costs ~5.5 million nuyen.gif with an SI of 2. Hmm, pretty cheap actually.
Shockwave_IIc
First as pointed out, you can take an option at least twice (Canon Example you ask?? Deus, Beta Grade that effectively Delta due to options) but doesn't each .05% reduction take up like 2 options??

Second, i thought that it was the Quickness and Reaction Attributes that took the strees not the implant thus you couldn't do the "no stress" thing with MBW??
mfb
not only that, the maximum rating of medical gear available to shadowrunners is, according to M&M page 136, 6. so you can have, at max, 6 positive options. and not only that, but herald is right--MBW causes Quickness and Reaction, not the cyberware itself, which means that the Redundancy surgery option has no effect.
toturi
Unless the GM rules that the Stress to Quickness and Reaction is to the Stress and Reaction confered to by the MBW, then perhaps there can be a case to be made for Redundancy.
Sargasso
QUOTE (Austere Emancipator)


[Edit]OOPS!
QUOTE (M&M @ p. 146 under OPTIONS)
Unless it is noted, the same option can be used twice.
Strictly by the rules, then, you can use Essence Reduction twice. Not three or more times, just twice. That means you're stuck at a minimum Essence cost of 6.3 for standard-grade MBW-4. Too bad.[/Edit]

Well, true, but given that no metahuman has more than 6 essence (shapeshifters have 8, but they cannot accept cyberware) I doubt that anyone even manufactures MBW in anything but a beta or delta ware grade.
Bigity
I've always just ruled that the Biotech skill a runner might possess just don't match up with the biotech doctors and surgeons practice.

I guess I kind of use the canon Biotech skill as first aid, and call it Surgury for actual chopping of the flesh.
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (Sargasso)
given that no metahuman has more than 6 essence (shapeshifters have 8, but they cannot accept cyberware) I doubt that anyone even manufactures MBW in anything but a beta or delta ware grade.

First off: cyberzombies.

Second off: 7*.8 (MBW L4 at alpha grade)=5.6, fittable in a human.

Third off: MBW levels lower than 4, which all fit in a non-CZ human at basic grade.

~J
Eyeless Blond
I'm just surprised that anyone would willingly *ask* for MBW. I always envisioned it as a bit of 'ware that only a very rich corp would ever install, and only then in someone they intended to use as a tool.
Synner
If you're playing in a game where one of your characters can afford to put 7.000.000 nuyen into a piece of ware (not to mention the cost of the betaclinic and the surgery itself), who really cares about overstress? BTW - You do realize the negative options also add up don't you?

Personally this is never ever going to crop up in my game.

The availability and cost of even the MBW4 puts it way beyond anything my players will get their hands on (and there's no way they'll ever begin the game with one), and even if they salvage it "second-hand" they'd still probably find something more useful to put the money into.

Ombre
Personally, I think that every piece of ware found in the books is not necessarily meant to end up in the hands of the Players. It is also an indicator of the technology level at a given time.

Some things should stay out of their reach (how sad a world would be where every desire can be satisfied).

Besides all the new gadgets should not be introduced outright...wait, introduce them progressively in order for the players to get the feel of the technology curve.
Obsolescence is what the cyberpunk genre is all about. In the fast-forward 21st century consumer society, everything gets outdated fast : the latest Native Trash band, the newest Yamaha sportsbike and even your bright new SOTA piece of cybergear will put you under the spotlights for that long...

It gets even better when players play a role in the advance: for example the Smartlink II technology appeared in my campaign following a run on the Ares tower in the Chicago CZ, when Ares paid the players to go there and establish an uplink so as to retrieve the research data buried in their dormant host...

Don' t give the books to the players as mere catalogs...
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (Eyeless Blond)
I'm just surprised that anyone would willingly *ask* for MBW. I always envisioned it as a bit of 'ware that only a very rich corp would ever install, and only then in someone they intended to use as a tool.

This is Shadowrun. Think of how many runners make the choice of Achilles every month.

~J
Wireknight
QUOTE (Cynic project)
Well, i am looking at the rules for cyberware,and my last street Sam. He had a MBW 4 system that would not get the atout stress,and was only .05% of it's essence cost. Yes, that is he had a level 4 move by wire system in him that cost .4 essence. 
 
this happened because on the team there were three characters that were capable of being docs,and we had a beta lab. But what basicly happened was that the main doc who was mundane had a biotech at 9,(3-5) task pool dice, 9 complementary skill dice,and a magically ative nurse. He would then take beta grade cyberware and reduce the TN to 2.Given his odds, he would beable to add something like 15 options on all the implants he installed.This would mean he would make all his cyberware better than delta. i know you can house rule this,to fix the rules... Now the scare thin is that if you give this to a mage...Who wouldn't take one magic point loss for a MBW 4?

While everyone else has said it at one point or another, I'm going to collate all the reasons why it is likely you have overlooked a few rules in achieving this. It's no slight on you guys as players, or the GM, as the rules are pretty arcane and distributed in such a way that very fundamental control factors for one set of rules tends to be contained in an obscure paragraph of another section entirely.

First and foremost, I'm referencing page 150 in Man and Machine. I assume that you are, looking at these rules, taking the Redundancy positive surgical option to attempt to allievate stress that the implant suffers. This does not achieve the effect that you believe it does, i.e. eliminating stress on the attributes of the character with the implant. It only affects the implant itself, so such stresses accumulate with their normal frequency.

Secondarily, you appear to be relying on the Essence Reduction positive surgical option. In order to get a final Essence cost of 0.4 for an implant with a base Essence cost of 7.0, you are, I assume, tallying up 19 such options(at 20, theoretically, the implant only costs the absolute minimum of 0.05 Essence, since it would otherwise cost 0 Essence). Given 19 Essence Reduction options, the implant would cost 0.35 Essence, not 0.4. 7.0 x 0.05 = 0.35.

That means that you are installing, I extrapolate, standard Move-By-Wire(Rating 4), in a Beta cyberclinic, with 20 positive surgical options. Both Redundancy and Essence Reduction have a Threshold modifier of +2, so the cumulative Threshold Modifier rises to +40 for the final implant.

Now that I've extrapolated the likely path of positive options you took, I'll explain why that really can't happen. In order to achieve that many positive options, your doctor would have to roll 23 successes on the surgery test, and, in order to achieve the final option, would have to reach the absolute threshold TN# when treating the surgery roll as an open test. This means that there's a +40 to the TN# somewhere in there, and I doubt that even with all the best modifiers in place, the TN# is going to be something achievable even with a horribly high number of dice.

Secondarily, you would need a rating 20 clinic in order to perform surgery with 20 positive surgical options. The average beta/cultured and/or nano-equipped facility has a rating of 6. Delta-clinics have a base rating of 8. This means that such a facility would have to have a rating 14 points higher than the base rating for a beta clinic, or 12 points higher than the base rating of a delta clinic. To put this another way, your clinic would need to have a rating of 2.5 times the base rating of a delta clinic, or over 3 times the base rating of a beta clinic.

Thirdly, the cost of such a clinic would be....(let me get out my calculator)....

Medical Facility
Availability: (Rating x 2)/1 Month
Cost: (Rating+6)^4 x 4000 Nuyen
Street Index: 3

Since it's a beta facility, however, we apply the beta-customization modifiers to its availability and cost, making the actual formula...

Beta-Grade Medical Facility
Availability: (Rating x 2) + 5 / 1.5 Months
Cost: (Rating+6)^4 x 4000 x 4 Nuyen
Street Index: 3

We'll determine the availability, first, since it's easiest. At rating 20, the availability of such a clinic would be 45 / 1.5 Months. That's almost impossibly high.

The cost, however, is truly phenomenal.

At (((20+6)^4) x 4000) x 4, or ((26^4) x 4000) x 4, or (26^4) x 16000, or 456976 x 16000, your final cost is 7311616000.

So that results in:

Crazy-Insane-Powerful Beta-Grade Medical Facility
Availability: 45 / 1.5 Months
Cost: 7,311,616,000 nuyen
Street Index: 3

I'm not claiming the characters involved actually got that much nuyen, only that whoever was regulating the game probably didn't account for, or read, the relevent rules sections to figure this out. As it is, we're talking about someone achieving a TN# in the 40's for both Etiquette, to acquire the clinic, and in the 30's to 40's, for Biotech, to install the implant, in order to make this possible from a statistical perspective.

From a monetary perspective, even if some incredible deal was found to avoid paying street index, the cost of such a clinic is 7.3 billion nuyen. With street index, it's close to 22 billion. That's a lotta cash. My most potent character, still running despite everyone claiming I should have retired him many years and thousands of karma ago, has an obscene retirement goal that is literally a small fraction of the cost needed to buy such a clinic, let alone operate it. You could buy an island and get it raised into low-Earth orbit for that. You could name it Asteroid M, and you could demand people called you Magneto, and, with your assets, people would do it.

So, yeah. I'd forgo the nearly essence-free move-by-wire, and instead declare myself king of my own orbiting island. I'd also convert a millionth of the money I saved into pennies, too, and throw them off onto unsuspecting cities by the bucket. That'd be cool.

[edit]
I'm a dumbass. I assumed "facility" was a clinic, rather than "shop". I'll redo my calculations:

Base: Availability: (Rating +2) / 1 wk; Cost: (Rating+4)^3 x 200 nuyen; SI: 2.
Beta: Availability: (Rating + 7) / 1.5 wk; Cost: (Rating+4)^3 x 800 nuyen; SI: 2.
Crazy: Availability: 27/1.5 wk; Cost: 11,059,200, SI 2.

Given that, it's actually... well, I won't say feasible, but less insanely unfeasible, to get one's hands on a rating 20 beta-clinic. At 11 to 22 million nuyen, and availability in the high 20's, however, it's still pretty impressively impossible to score for an individual.
[/edit]
Siege
Hey Big - if you take a look at the Mr. J's LBL, they give stats for a beta-grade shadow-clinic doc.

Which means someone, somewhere is gonna take him as a starting contact. grinbig.gif

But they list "Surgery" as a knowledge skill which, I imagine, compliments Biotech.

Remember the basic street doc only has Biotech (Active) and Medicine (Knowledge) and he can still do things like surgery and cyber implants.

-Siege
mfb
i'm not sure the listed stats of most NPCs in any SR book should be taken at face value. that seems to be where most of the errors in the books are concentrated.
Siege
I'm all for a comprehensive re-write of the medical system and what skills are needed to do which things.

Until then, the best we can manage is to make assumptions based on material presented and try to infer how the new material works in the existing framework.

Which leads me to the assumption of how "surgery" works while still allowing street docs to do the things they tend to do.

-Siege
RedmondLarry
QUOTE (Cynic project @ Sep 11 2004, 12:14 PM)
He had a MBW 4 system that would not get the atout stress,and was only .05% of it's essence cost. Yes, that is he had a level 4 move by wire system in him that cost .4 essence.

Just a minor math nit.
.4 essence is roughly 5% of 7 essence. Not .05%

.05% essence cost for MBW-4 would be .0035 essence.
Siege
As mfb was kind enough to note, I made an error in looking at the Elite Surgeon in JLBB.

"Surgery" is a specialization of Biotech and not it's own knowledge skill.

Oops.

-Siege
Cynic project
When you sell your soul to Ares they tend to let you play in their toy stores.Yes, Ares has a clinic that would let mister doc do these things.
KarmaInferno
QUOTE (Edward @ Sep 11 2004, 08:13 PM)
Your friend for life is the worlds best cyber implant sergen. He gives you 20% of. That makes the price for your surgery 8,000,000 instead of the normal 10,000,000.

You could play a PC with the ability to do this but the GM should demand a dammed good reason why you run the shadows. Any corp would be able and wiling to hide your ass for that kind of skill working on there S4 units.

I will echo that sentiment.

If you're really that good a surgeon (and by your description this guy has got to be among the top five most amazing surgeons on the planet), I cannot think of ANYTHING within the realm of reasonable plot why a corp would not just make your history just disappear to get you working for them.

Even if you were some sick twisted serial baby killer I'm sure a few mega-corps would be willing to secretly supply you you with infants for your pleasure if it meant having your services.

It just stretches credulity to have such a surgeon-with-the-hands-of-god running the shadows.


-karma
Siege
It would be like finding out the CEO of Ares Macrotechnologies runs in the Seattle shadows as a hobby.

Possible, but pretty bloody unlikely.

-Siege
Eyeless Blond
Heh, I am *so* stealing that idea if I ever muster up the energy to GM. nyahnyah.gif
lokugh
QUOTE (Cynic project @ Sep 11 2004, 02:14 PM)
Well, i am looking at the rules for cyberware,and my last street Sam. He had a MBW 4 system that would not get the atout stress,and was only .05% of it's essence cost. Yes, that is he had a level 4 move by wire system in him that cost .4 essence. 
 
this happened because on the team there were three characters that were capable of being docs,and we had a beta lab. But what basicly happened was that the main doc who was mundane had a biotech at 9,(3-5) task pool dice, 9 complementary skill dice,and a magically ative nurse. He would then take beta grade cyberware and reduce the TN to 2.Given his odds, he would beable to add something like 15 options on all the implants he installed.This would mean he would make all his cyberware better than delta. i know you can house rule this,to fix the rules... Now the scare thin is that if you give this to a mage...Who wouldn't take one magic point loss for a MBW 4?

Ok, here are the problems I see:

1. Number of positive options cannot exceed the medical rating of the facility. For a beta clinic, that is a rating of 6 (M&M 145 under options, the rating table is on 144). So, six positive options, max. There is no limit I can find on how many times a single option can be added (the sentence saying the option can be used twice was referring to the negative options and doesn't go higher because two negative options is all you can have). So, you can use this to reduce the cost by 30% (40% max for a delta clinic) to get beta MBW 4 to 2.94 essence. If you can get the successes (see below).

2. Unless I am mistaken, each "Reduce Essence" option adds +2 to the target number (M&M 150). That means that adding the max (6) positive effects, increases the target number by +12 for a TN of 14 (accepting he could get the base number to 2, which I can see). If unlimited positives were allowed, you'd need 19 positives to get beta MBW 4 down to .4 (95% reduction), which means a TN of 40. Good luck, super doc, getting even one success (which adds 2 negative modifiers and no positives) much less the nine (or 21) needed for 6 (or 19) positives. If you don't get the nine positives (or 21), and you were counting on them to get you under an essence restraint, then you die, even though the surgery was successful.

3. Aren't players restricted to a max skill of 6 at creation (not counting specialization)? So, that's at least 36 good karma to get to Biotech 9 after character creation (maybe less, maybe more, depending on Intelligence). Someone actually did that to a biotech level 6 skill already? How? Because not only do you need to raise the skill, you'd need to have access to some serious cutting edge research facilities to learn that and spend much time getting there. This is a knowledge skill, not an active skill you can improve with practice...

David
Shockwave_IIc
QUOTE (lokugh)
This is a knowledge skill, not an active skill you can improve with practice...


Ewww Bad wording!! extinguish.gif

Though i do get your meaning. Biotech is very in my eyes one of those skills you get from research and being taught as well as pratice. Allthough Someone had to learn it first....not sure how i rule that, but thankfully noone in my group has desided to learn a "fringe skill" at such high level (Yet)
lokugh
QUOTE (Shockwave_IIc)
QUOTE (lokugh)
This is a knowledge skill, not an active skill you can improve with practice...


Ewww Bad wording!! extinguish.gif

Though i do get your meaning. Biotech is very in my eyes one of those skills you get from research and being taught as well as pratice. Allthough Someone had to learn it first....not sure how i rule that, but thankfully noone in my group has desided to learn a "fringe skill" at such high level (Yet)

Yeah, a little. What I mean is that Biotech skill can't really be learned by general practice (not like firearms, say). An active skill can be assumed to get better with experience (at least I rule it so in my games, up to a point). A knowledge skill must be improved by study and research, not general shadowrunning. Beyond a certain point (I think level 7, based on how the skill levels are described in SR3) you can't learn it from journals, you have to be doing your own experiments.
Siege
Actually, there isn't a canon requirement determining how a character can or can't improve any particular skill.

How would a character improve Biotech? Virtual trainer, donating care to the poor, moon-lighting as a street doc, unsavory experiments with soon-to-be ghoul food are just a few of the possibilities.

As for a character starting with a 6 in any particular skill, you can apply similar arguments for any such skill that have been put forth regarding Biotech.

As for having a high fringe skill - that's half the fun of creative characters. grinbig.gif

-Siege

Edit: Where are you going to find such a mass of willing patients, besides a Shadowrun? grinbig.gif
Siege
Now, if you wanted to complain Biotech covers too many skills, as does Computers and Electronics, you might have more of a case.

-Siege
mfb
biotech, or at least surgery, is also a very physical skill, in that it requires intense hand-eye coordination.
lokugh
QUOTE (Siege @ Sep 12 2004, 04:59 PM)
Actually, there isn't a canon requirement determining how a character can or can't improve any particular skill.

How would a character improve Biotech?  Virtual trainer, donating care to the poor, moon-lighting as a street doc, unsavory experiments with soon-to-be ghoul food are just a few of the possibilities.

As for a character starting with a 6 in any particular skill, you can apply similar arguments for any such skill that have been put forth regarding Biotech. 

As for having a high fringe skill - that's half the fun of creative characters. grinbig.gif

-Siege

Edit: Where are you going to find such a mass of willing patients, besides a Shadowrun? grinbig.gif

True, there is no canon requirements...a GM can allow anything they want. In any reasonable level campaign raising any knowledge skill above 8 would be a problem, I would think (a power campaign or ultra-high level campaign might be different).

Now, for an active skill, I could argue the following: Skill level 6 at start is a combination of knowledge and in-grained talent. So, raising it above that level is just the result of experience and further practice. I mean, someone has to be the best shooter in the world, or best race car driver or whatever, and these are skills you can raise just by practicing them.

Knowledge skills, on the other hand, are different. Logically, you can raise them in two ways: 1) by study, which means someone else already did the research and published the findings (or you stole unpublished ones) 2) you can do the research to expand the envelope of metahuman knowledge.

From the description in SR3, level 7 is the envelope for metahuman knowledge. Pure talent might take you to level 8 (your native ability to apply what you learn) but beyond that, you are beyond SOTA...you have to be creating your own knowledge. Now, in biotech, that means experimentation and testing. Now, you are right, a shadowrunner might be doing that, but I'd expect it to be roleplayed (you roam the barrens to kidnap squatters so you can implant cyberware in them...but you'd best have the facilities somewhere to practice in).

These are not precisely canon, but they fit logically with the canon rules.
Shockwave_IIc
Yup at Lvl 8 in a Knowledge Skill People recognise you as a major "player" in the field. Once there your creating Science not prefroming it.

Only problems is, Biotech is an active skill not knowledge thus for that you have to argue against Canon, not that this would be the first time someone has done so...

Edward
Biotech is one of those skills that is heavy on both theory and practical. Why do you think medical schools ask people to donate their bodies to them as well of having some of the most lectures at uni?

A virtual tutor could teach you both (the wonders of simsence) but it would likely not be available above rating 6 or 7 (a program cant teach you to be the best in the world as 8 is described). You could get texts from the matrix but you can only learn so much from a book and a dead body. Ultimately you will need to spend some time working on living people installing real cyber wear. You can ether sign on with a corp. that will issue you a medical licence or moonlight as a street dock.

Edward
lokugh
Yup, you are right, my bad. I keep thinking of it as medical skill. In that case, as a GM, I might allow a Biotech level 9...but the good karma cost just went up to 48 good karma...
Siege
Look at some of the private instruction available for Handgun and other firearms.

Thunder Ranch, for example.

To raise a shooter's ability in these training facilities requires more than just time on the range. Otherwise I could become a Marine sniper quality shooter by spending a lot of time on the range.

-Siege

lokugh
QUOTE (Siege)
Look at some of the private instruction available for Handgun and other firearms.

Thunder Ranch, for example.

To raise a shooter's ability in these training facilities requires more than just time on the range. Otherwise I could become a Marine sniper quality shooter by spending a lot of time on the range.

-Siege

You could if you had the talent. It is easier if you have instruction, but instruction is not required.
Siege
Uh. Yeah.

-Siege
lokugh
You don't think you could learn to be a Marine Sniper with practice and reviewing a few manuals? People do it all the time, at least the marksmanship part. You can learn the tactics and the like from readily available manuals. If you have the talent and the drive, which we must assume any Shadowrunner with level 7 or 8 firearms would have, you need never run into an instructor...at least beyond the basics, which occur before character creation.
mfb
yeah. that's kinda what the manuals are for.
Siege
Folks, if that's what you believe - far be it from me to try and dissuade you.

-Siege
FrostyNSO
Siege...you are completely right =)
lokugh
QUOTE (Siege)
Folks, if that's what you believe - far be it from me to try and dissuade you.

-Siege

It should be noted, I never intended to imply they could become MARINES that way, merely to reach that level of skill at shooting, even under adverse conditions. I'll stop trying to persuade you as well, however.
snowRaven
Saying you need an instructor to acheive a certain skill level isn't fully correct, regardless of the skill you are talking about.

It will certainly be easier, and sometimes much, much easier - true. But there is nothing you cannot learn from study, practice and trial and error if you are willing to put down the effort required. Even if it takes half a lifetime of dedication, it isn't impossible.

However, there are plenty of things most people could not hope to excel at in a whole lifetime, if they lack access to the necessary study material. This simply because the subjects are so advanced and require so much base knowledge that you simply don't have time to learn it all by yourself.

If instructors were an absolute necesity for any skill, no one would have that skill, since the first person to learn it wouldn't have had an instructor.

Of course, if you include instructive texts in the concept 'instructor', then they are necessary to a certain degree for some skills.
FrostyNSO
Try learning urban breach tactics by yourself using manuals and see how well it holds up when you actually have to perform one.

It's pretty important to have people who have actually done something in order for you to learn it most effectively.

Now if we're talking getting better at something you already know...that's a different story, and trial and error + practice are about the only way to get better.
mfb
i'd say it's the opposite, actually. anybody can pick up a manual and learn the basics of urban breach tactics or anything else. turning that working knowlege into an instinctive response requires training and/or direct experience.
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